To find out what permissions your account has, go to Special:Preferences. Your permissions are listed in the user profile tab under "Member of groups".

A contributor's ability to perform certain actions in Wikipedia depends on their user access level. This is determined by whether the editor is logged in to an account, whether the account has a sufficient age and number of edits, and what additional rights ("user groups", also called "flags" or "bits") have been assigned manually to the account.

Everyone is able to read Wikipedia. Unless they are blocked, they may freely edit most pages without the need to be logged in. Being logged in gives users a number of advantages including the ability to create new pages. Accounts more than a certain number of days old with more than a certain number of edits automatically become autoconfirmed. Further access levels need to be assigned manually by a user with the appropriate authority. An editor with more experience and good standing can attempt to become an administrator (sysop), which provides a large number of advanced permissions. A number of other flags for specialized tasks are also available.

New users

Users who edit through an account they have registered may immediately create pages in any namespace (except the MediaWiki namespace, and limited to eight per minute) and may also e-mail other users if they activate an email address in their user preferences. All logged-in users may mark edits as minor. They may purge pages without a confirmation step, but are still required to answer a CAPTCHA when adding external links. They may save books to their userspace but not the Books namespace. They may also customize their Wikimedia interface and its options as they wish, via Special:Preferences or by adding personalCSS or JavaScript rules to their vector.css or vector.js files.

Autoconfirmed and confirmed users

Several actions on the English Wikipedia are restricted to user accounts that have been created for a certain number of days and which have made a certain number of edits. Users who meet these requirements are considered part of the pseudo-group 'autoconfirmed'. The conditions for autoconfirmed status are checked every time a user attempts to perform a restricted action; if they are met, it is granted automatically by the software. Although the precise requirements for autoconfirmed status vary according to circumstances, most English Wikipedia user accounts that are more than four days old and have made at least 10 edits are considered autoconfirmed. However, users with IPBE editing through the Tor network are subjected to stricter autoconfirmed thresholds: 90 days and 100 edits.

Autoconfirmed or confirmed status is required to move pages, edit semi-protected pages, and upload files or upload a new version of an existing file. Autoconfirmed users are no longer required to enter a CAPTCHA for most events; they may mark pages created by others as patrolled in Special:NewPages and save books to the Books namespace. In addition, the Edit filter has a number of warning settings that only affect editors who are not autoconfirmed.

In some situations, it is necessary for accounts to be exempted from the customary confirmation period. The 'confirmed' group contains the same rights as the 'autoconfirmed' pseudo-group, but can be granted by administrators as necessary. There is no point in giving this right to a user whose account is already autoconfirmed, because it provides exactly the same abilities. To request this permission see Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Confirmed. See Special:ListUsers/confirmed for a list of the 406 confirmed users.

As of August 2014[update], there were approximately 1.4 million autoconfirmed users on English Wikipedia, of which the vast majority are inactive. See Special:ActiveUsers for recently active users.

Administrators and bureaucrats

Administrators

Administrator rights are granted by the community at Requests for Adminship (RfA).[1] The RfA process involves considerable discussion and examination of their activities as an editor. Users who are members of this user group have access to a number of tools to allow them to carry out certain functions on the wiki. The tools cover processes such as page deletion, page protection, blocking and unblocking, access to modify fully protected pages and the Mediawiki interface. Administrators also have the ability to grant and remove account creator, rollback, ipblock-exempt, confirmed user, file mover, pending changes reviewer, autopatrolled, template editor and edit filter manager rights to other users, and to their own alternate accounts. By convention, administrators also normally take responsibility for judging the outcome of certain discussions requiring these technical controls (such as deletions). Administrators are not granted special editorial control over article content.

See Special:ListUsers/sysop for a list of the 1347 administrators, also known as "sysops" (system operators). The two terms are used interchangeably.

Other flags giving access to specialized functions

Pending changes reviewer

Members of this group can review other users' edits to articles placed under pending changes protection. When pending changes was first implemented, the right was automatically assigned to administrators. Prior to September 2014, this right was known as "reviewer".

Autopatrolled

Members of this group have 'autopatrol', which allows them to have their pages automatically patrolled on the New Pages list. This right is automatically assigned to administrators. Prior to June 2010, this right was known as "autoreviewer".

File mover

The file mover user right is intended to allow users experienced in working with files to rename them, subject to policy, with the ease that autoconfirmed users already enjoy when renaming Wikipedia articles. This right is automatically assigned to administrators.

Accountcreator

Users who are given the accountcreator flag ('accountcreator' user group) are not affected by the 6 account creation limit per day per IP, and can create accounts for other users without restriction. Users in this group can also override the anti-spoof checks on account creation. This right is automatically assigned to administrators and bureaucrats.[4] Additionally, account creators are able to create accounts with names that are otherwise blocked by the title blacklist.

Template editor

Members of this group are allowed to edit pages protected with template protection as well as create and edit editnotices. Template protection is only applied to pages in the template and module namespaces. It is intended to allow experienced template and module coders to make changes without having to request that an administrator make the edits for them.

Ipblock-exempt

Users who are given the ipblock-exempt flag ('ipblock-exempt' user group) are not affected by autoblocks and blocks of IP addresses and ranges that aren't made with the "anonymous users only" setting. This right is automatically assigned to administrators and bots, however the flag must be added separately to enable editing from IP addresses affected by Tor blocks.

Oversight

Users who are given the oversight flag ('oversight' user group) have access to Special:HideRevision, through which they can permanently hide revisions of pages from all users, and Special:Oversight, where they can view a log of such actions and the content of the hidden revisions. This right is only granted to exceedingly few users who are at least 18 years old and have identified themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation. Oversights are also required to be administrators.[1]

CheckUser

Users who are given the checkuser flag ('checkuser' user group) have access to Special:CheckUser. They are able to view a list of all IP addresses used by a user account to edit the English Wikipedia, a list of all edits made by an IP, or all user accounts that have used an IP address. They may also view a log of such requests. This right is only granted to exceedingly few users who are at least 18 years old and have identified themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation. Checkusers are also required to be administrators.[1]

Course coordinator, instructor, online and campus volunteer

Members of these user groups (in addition to administrators) can manage course pages in the "Education Program:" namespace. Course coordinator rights (as well as the instructor, online volunteer and campus volunteer rights) are assigned by administrators. Course coordinators may assign "course online volunteer", "course campus volunteer", and "course instructor" rights to other users. Online and campus volunteers, respectively, can designate themselves as supporters for individual courses (whom students can turn to for help, online or in person). They do this by going to the course page and using the software interface to associate their account with the course.

Other flagged accounts

Bots

Accounts used by approved bots to make pre-approved edits can be flagged as such. Bot accounts are automated or semi-automated, the nature of their edits is well defined, and they will be quickly blocked if their actions vary from their given tasks, so they need less scrutiny than human edits.

For this reason, contributions from accounts with the bot flag ('bot' user group) are not displayed in recent changes or watchlists to users who have opted to hide bot edits. Minor edits made by bot accounts to user talk pages do not trigger the "you have new messages" banner. Bot accounts can query the API in batches of 5,000 rather than 500.

Founder

The founder group was created on the English Wikipedia by developer Tim Starling,[when?] without community input, as a unique group for Jimmy Wales. The group gives Wales full access to user rights. As 'local founder actions' are usually of great interest to the local community, and are only relevant to the English Wikipedia, the local 'founder' right also has the benefit of allowing Wales' actions to be visible in the English Wikipedia rights log; actions performed with the global founder bit are not visible in that record, but only on the log at Metawiki.

Importers and Transwiki

Transwiki and Importers are flags which give permissions on Special:Import. This interface allows users to move pages between Wikimedia wikis (for instance, to copy an article written in English on another-language wiki, while preserving full edit history). Although MediaWiki software provides the ability to import articles directly from XML (which may come from any wiki site), on en.wikipedia and most other Wikimedia projects this requires a special user right 'importupload' (formerly known as 'importraw'), which is restricted to Stewards and occasionally one or two other highly trusted users.

Oauthadmin

Indefinitely blocked users

In general, rights of editors blocked indefinitely should be left as is. Rights specifically related to the reason for blocking may be removed at the discretion of the blocking or unblocking administrators.[7]

Stewards

Stewardship is an elected role, and stewards are appointed globally across all public Wikimedia wikis.

Users who are members of the 'steward' user group may grant and revoke any permission to or from any user on any wiki operated by the Wikimedia Foundation which allows open account creation. This group is set on MetaWiki, and may use meta:Special:Userrights to set permissions on any Wikimedia wiki; they may add or remove any user from any group configured on metawiki. Stewards generally act only when there is no user on a particular wiki that can make the necessary change. This includes granting of the 'administrator' or 'bureaucrat' access levels on wikis which do not have any local bureaucrats, and removing such flags if the user resigns or the account is acting maliciously. Stewards are also responsible for granting and revoking access levels such as 'oversight' and 'checkuser', as no other group is capable of making such changes except staff/sysadmins.

Stewards can also act as checkusers, oversighters, bureaucrats or administrators on wikis which do not have active local members of those groups. For example, if a wiki has a passing need for an edit to be oversighted, a steward can add themselves to the 'oversight' user group on that wiki, perform the necessary function, and then remove themselves from the 'oversight' group using their steward rights.

Other global user groups

Table

As a function of the Requests for adminship and Requests for Bureaucratship processes, all bureaucrats on the English Wikipedia are also administrators, and so have all the permissions of the 'sysop' user group in addition to those rights from the 'bureaucrat' group. However this is not a requirement of the MediaWiki software; it is technically possible for a user to be a bureaucrat without also being an admin.

Deprecated permissions are either no longer assigned to any group, or the group to which they are assigned is no longer populated.

Special:ListGroupRights is an automatically generated list of granted user group rights. The below table is manually updated.

The userright proxyunbannable is assigned to administrators but has no effect since WMF wikis use mw:Extension:TorBlock instead of the default mediawiki proxy blocker. Administrators are not exempt from tor blocks, only users in the IP block exemptions usergroup are, due to the torunblocked userright.

IPs and new users are limited to 8 edits per minute. Autoconfirmed or confirmed users who are in no usergroup with the noratelimit userright are limited to 8 moves per minutes. Rollbackers in the same situation are limited to 100 rollbacks per minute.[8] Account creations are subject to an IP based limit, set at 6 for WMF wikis, but users with noratelimit are unaffected.

^1 Because bureaucrats were granted the ability to do this, stewards would refer most ordinary requests for removal of the sysop permission to them, but retain the right to remove the sysop permission when appropriate (such as emergencies or requests from the Arbitration Committee).

Notes

^ abcThe Wikimedia Foundation has stated that an "RFA or RFA-identical process" is required for users to be granted access to deleted revisions and hence have the administrator user right.

^MediaWikidefault settings are that the 'bureaucrats' group has the userrights flag (giving access to Special:UserRights) and can add or remove any flags. However this can be modified by mw:Manual:$wgAddGroups and mw:Manual:$wgRemoveGroups to restrict adding/removing flags to specified ones. Wikimedia's settings file uses these, and by default bureaucrats can only removebot flags and addadministrator, bureaucrat and bot flags. English Wikipedia, or 'enwiki', settings additionally permit adding accountcreator and removal of ipblock-exempt and accountcreator; which administrators can do anyway, and removal of sysop.